Tillich, for later, about cultural theology

Tillich, for later, about cultural theology

Into these divided worlds, Tillich introduced the idea that culture and religion are within each other. His “existential concept of religion” eliminated the gap between the sacred and the secular. Tillich called religion “the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern.” In turn, he said, culture was “the form of religion” which, era by era, expresses “intimate movement of the soul” as art. To this end, Tillich famously referred to Picasso’s “Guernica” as “the greatest Protestant painting after 1900.” In his “Theology at the End of Culture” (Peeters, 2005), Re Manning said Tillich saw this explicit war painting as a protest against the way humans are simultaneously estranged from the divine (genocide) and embrace it (art).